


navillera

by jisungtheworld (winwinnie)



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Break Up, Han Jisung | Han is Oblivious, Lee Minho | Lee Know is Whipped, M/M, Near Death Experiences (kind of), Summer Romance, Temporary Character Death, Time Loop, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23262619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/winwinnie/pseuds/jisungtheworld
Summary: Jisung has lips that taste like oranges. His hair is blond in the summer sun, and his eyes sparkle like the brightest stars.He's slipping away, but Minho refuses to let go.or: Their relationship ends with summer. It's a pity the summer never ends.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 26
Kudos: 80
Collections: MINSUNG BINGO: Round One





	navillera

**Author's Note:**

> i've had this outline for a while, so i'm glad to finally finish and share it!  
> a version of this actually made its way into another fic i wrote, but this original idea never quite lost its potential.
> 
> this is for [minsung prompt bingo!](https://twitter.com/minsungbingo)  
> prompts: time loop, unreliable narrator, seasonal motif (summer)
> 
> enjoy!

The night is still warm when Minho opens the door. The heat of the day has bled into the inky sky, and left the air sticky and suffocating. It's the very beginning of a heatwave his town will remember for years. He already knows that the grass will dry up quickly, that the water will be rationed and that the collection of orange and pineapple ice lollies in his freezer will be put to good use.

The heat hits him as soon as he steps outside. 

It's a kind of warm that only summer can bring, and even the dark sky doesn't seem that dark. The days stretch on in this kind of weather. It doesn't bother him that he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt, the warmth clings to his skin more than an extra layer ever could.

It's just past midnight, so no one else is around to comment on his clothes anyway.

The stars seem to shine a little brighter. It's a clear night, no clouds in sight, and even the moon seems to watch him as he makes his way down his driveway. It's almost as if they're waiting for something, with the same baited breath as Minho. His blood hums with anticipation, throbbing with the thought that something, _something_ , is about to happen.

He steps out into the pavement just as the first day of summer begins.

And-

The universe collides with that _something_. Minho is almost knocked off his feet. It's a good thing he'd put one hand on the gate behind him, his other reaching out to grab the wrist of the boy in front of him. 

He can taste the blood in his mouth anyway, feel the scrapes on his knees as he tumbles to the ground. His teeth clip the tip of his tongue as he falls, and the pain in his knees bursts up in a flare of bright crimson. It hurts.

"Oh god - I'm so sorry - are you okay?"

Minho looks down. He didn't fall. His fingers are white from where they're wrapped around the gate, but his feet are solidly planted on the ground. He's still holding onto the boy's wrist, pulling at the fabric of his hoodie in a way that's bound to stretch. He lets go as soon as he notices. "I'm fine."

The boy doesn't look so convinced. "Are you sure? It's a good thing you were holding onto something," he looks Minho up and down, before taking a step back awkwardly, "I- yeah, I shouldn't have been running that fast."

Minho doesn't ask why he was running. He doesn't ask why the boy is wearing a hoodie in such warm weather, or where he was going in such a hurry.

Instead, he extends his hand. "I'm Minho," he says, swallowing down the taste of blood between his teeth.

The boy in front of him takes his hand. His blond hair seems to shine under the stars, hoodie slightly too big and non-designer tears in his jeans. When he smiles in return, the heart-shaped grin leaves Minho slightly breathless. "I'm Jisung. Nice to meet you."

\--

Jisung, Minho learns, has just moved. He lives on a street five minutes away from Minho, and has decorated his ceiling with glow-in-the-dark stars. There's a red cap he wears that practically never leaves his head, his favourite food is cheesecake, and he still sleeps with a squirrel plushie. He won't say why he left his last town, but his parents don't wish him goodbye as he leaves the house.

Minho won't ask anyway. In return, Jisung doesn't ask why Minho's house is always empty.

If their first meeting was quick, their relationship is even faster.

They click in a way most people never do. Two puzzle pieces, Jisung says as he's sat on Minho's bedroom floor, two bits of lego that you press together and then can never take apart. Jisung is loud like that. His wardrobe finds its way onto the floor with him, and his cap rests on a pile of pillows like a crown.

Minho likes how the word 'boyfriend' sounds in his mouth.

The summer only gets hotter, and Jisung soon sheds his signature hoodie. It's too warm for any extra layers. The cap doesn't change, but it's soon joined by a pair of dark sunglasses, slipping down his face every time he moves a little too quickly. Their hair sticks to their foreheads, skin soft with endless layers of sun cream. 

Minho gets out his paddling pool.

It's old, sitting in his garage for at least ten years since the last time it was used. The indigo rim has long faded to match the powder blue sky, cartoon dolphins smiling at them from the sides paling into white. 

There's a thick layer of dust when he pulls it out from underneath a pile of unused gardening tools, and several dead spiders. 

But it's worth it just to see how Jisung's face lights up.

They cover over the holes with duct tape, and spend almost an hour trying to blow the thing up. There are so many rips and tears that at first it seems impossible, but Jisung doesn't give up. Minho passes him strip after strip of tape, and the smile never quite leaves his face.

He looks beautiful like this.

It's finished just as the afternoon begins to dip into evening, the heat of the day melting into a sticky humidity. Minho drags his hosepipe out and fills the pool to the rim. It took him longer than he expected to fix it up, and it's much too late to actually paddle, but he's incredibly aware of the water ban tomorrow. 

The water seems to sparkle despite the dust still clouding the water. Jisung climbs in anyway, and watches as evening fades into the stars above him. His hair plasters to his face. There's a layer of goose-bumps on his skin. But his eyes glow bright in the darkness, and his smile never falters.

The paddling pool becomes their safe haven.

But even that doesn't last for long. The heat becomes even more overpowering, and the water turns an alarming shade of brown-green, drowning bugs finding the cool air just as refreshing as they do. Minho has to pour it out after a week. Jisung insists he use it to water the plants, but the parched grass only seems to get drier.

It takes a week, but eventually they find somewhere else to cool down.

There's a lake nearby. It's hidden in a grove of trees, far enough from the dusty roads that no one else knows of its existence. The weather gets hotter, the summer days get longer, and Jisung steals his older brother's bike.

They leave in the night, when the air is still cool and a breeze tugs at their clothes, underneath the brilliant stars. There's a picnic basket balanced on Minho's own bike, and their swimming shorts rustle as the cycle away. It's too hot to wear anything else. Minho knows it will only get hotter. 

The sun is just beginning to rise when they finally arrive.

Just as expected, the water is cool. Jisung doesn't even bother to take his cap off as he dives in, hiding beneath the shade of overlooking trees. There's a flat patch of rocks just by the edge of the water, and Minho lays their bikes down on top of it. The world is warm and sticky. It's hard enough to breathe in such suffocating weather, but Jisung still takes his breath away.

"Don't go too deep," he calls out.

Minho's been here often enough to know of the hidden dangers. The lake is much deeper than it seems, the floor warped by the deceptively clear water, and Jisung is nothing if not reckless. The coolness is addictive, but that's what makes it so dangerous. 

In all honestly, Minho doesn't like swimming.

The thought of the floor so far beneath him, stranded in an ocean of blue, makes him feel nauseous. It's relief from the oppressive heat, but is it worth the terror when his feet suddenly are no longer on the ground? It's no secret that he's afraid of heights, so why is the lake so different? 

The first time he'd visited, he'd just watched. The sick feeling in his stomach never quite faded. He hated this lake, really.

But Jisung wanted to visit.

"Jisung?"

_Don't go out too deep. Don't go out too deep._

But Jisung never listens.

He's gone silent. The splashes he'd been making fade into the sticky air, leaving the world frozen in free-fall. A last few ripples lap against Minho's toes, but Jisung is gone. The quiet of the lake is louder than any cry for help he could have made. The surface of the water is completely still.

Minho is wading in without a second thought.

With mind-numbing precision, he's swimming to the far side of the lake. There's a knife in his hand. It's the one he'd just taken out of the picnic basket, and he holds onto it like a lifeline.

The world seems to be in high-definition. He can barely hear the silence anymore, not over the beating of his own heart. _Jisung_. There's water in his lungs, water in his mouth, water choking until he can no longer breath, and yet he's not even underwater. 

Pale fingers reach up from the darkness.

The water isn't as clear anymore. It's covered in dust and sand from Jisung's desperate struggling, the last few bubbles escaping from his mouth. Minho dives down before he can convince himself out of it. He can feel his lungs burning, taste the stale water of the lake on his tongue. 

Jisung's ankle is trapped between two rocks.

Minho brings the knife to the smaller one. Using the hilt, he presses against Jisung's skin, squeezing with all of his strength, pushing past the way Jisung's cry can be heard even underwater. He pushes, _pushes_ , and-

They rise to the surface. Minho can no longer tell whether the water on his face is from the lake or his own tears. Jisung presses their bodies together as they stumble to shore, and Minho never wants to let him go. 

The picnic is never eaten.

The lake, as beautiful as it is, stays lonely.

The cold waters are dangerous. Minho can't risk losing Jisung again.

His room becomes their new paradise. Every fan they can find gets plugged in, crying out in a symphony of electronic whirring. They don't do much, just pushing the warm air around, but it's nice to pretend.

The summer is reaching a crescendo, as they wait and waste away the days. The flowers are wilting now, joining the brown grass and dry leaves, cracked mud too harsh for even the most beautiful petals to stay bright. The sun seems to fly across the sky, leaving trails of even hotter days to come. 

Jisung's blond hair begins to grow out.

Minho's freezer is finally opened.

In the heat of the summer, he'd forgotten that it existed. Those piles of orange and pineapple lollies that he'd made sure to buy have been lying abandoned, and Minho's never felt more grateful. They move from lying on his bedroom floor to lying in the kitchen. The freezer door stays open, every fan in the house pointed towards the tangle of limbs on the floor.

Minho takes one of each flavour. The cold stings his fingers, but it's nothing compared to how his heart skips a beat when Jisung presses himself up against him.

His knees are up against the freezer door, practically crawling into the icebox in an attempt to escape from the overwhelming warmth of summer. His cap falls of his head, but they're both too exhausted to make a move to pick it up. 

_It won't work_ , Minho wants to say. _This summer seems endless._ _It only gets hotter from here._ Instead, he rips open the wrapper of the orange lolly and passes it to Jisung silently.

"Hey!" Jisung says when he finally notices, voice muffled against the hum of the freezer and whir of the fans, "Orange is my favourite!" 

When he climbs back out of the kitchen appliance, his mouth is smeared with the same colour. Minho can taste orange between his own teeth, the overwhelming desire to lean forwards. His lips tingle with anticipation. Two bodies pressed up against the freezer door, and soon the orange flavour isn't just from his imagination. 

The lollies don't stay frozen for long.

\---

Summer is beginning to fade, and so is Jisung.

He stops spending so much time in Minho's room. His lips don't taste like oranges anymore. His clothes begin to make their way back to his own wardrobe, his curtains stay shut, and his stupid floppy cap is attached to his head all over again. 

Jisung says he is growing up. He takes the stars down off his ceiling, and buries his squirrel plushie under his piles of hundreds of hoodies. He says that he doesn't cheesecake anymore, that he's gone off the flavour of oranges.

He dyes his hair brown. 

Despite Minho's best efforts, Jisung is fading.

It can't stay perfect for long. Minho tries, he really does, but nothing ever works. Their bikes begin to gather dust in the garage, and the paddling pool is pushed back into its beat-up cardboard box. 

The days get cooler.

Summer only lasts for so long, after all. The days bleed into the nights, and the evenings begin to cool. The air isn't as sticky. It feels like they can finally breathe all over again, but Minho misses the suffocating weight in his lungs. The stars are always just as bright, and the moon never looks away from its milky perch, but they don't seem quite as beautiful. 

Jisung asks to meet him on his doorstep. 

Minho asks for it to be midnight.

When they meet, the air is still warm. It won't stay that way. Tomorrow, clouds might cover the never-ending sky. It might no longer be t-shirt weather, and the air might be soft and light. The grass might be green again, the flowers may gain some of their colour back. Tomorrow, they won't be Minho and Jisung anymore.

They'll just be Minho. And Jisung. 

It's the last day of summer.

It always is.

"I'm sorry," says Jisung. His face still glows. He'll always be beautiful to Minho, even when his words shatter his hearts into thousands of tiny glass shards. His mouth will always taste like oranges, and in Minho's mind, his hair will always be blond.

Minho closes the door. 

It's not quite midnight yet, but it always takes him a while to wipe the tears off his face. No matter how many times Jisung breaks his heart, it doesn't make the hurt any less. The clock by the door never stops marching forward.

He opens the door again.

Jisung is gone, and it's warm. Not quite midnight. 

The heat of the day has bled into the inky sky, and left the air sticky and suffocating. It's the very beginning of a heatwave his town will remember for years. It doesn't bother him that he's wearing shorts and a t-shirt, the warmth clings to his skin more than an extra layer ever could.

The anticipation is back. Just a few more moments to midnight, and there's already a figure running down the pavement by his house. Minho is stood by his gate with seconds to spare, hand wrapped around the familiar twisted metal, bracing for impact. 

The stars are clear, and the moon seems to watch his every movement. They're waiting for something with the same baited breath as Minho. His blood hums with anticipation, throbbing with the knowledge that something, _something_ , is about to happen.

He steps out into the pavement just as the first day of summer begins.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave a comment if you enjoyed! this is a different writing style to what i usually use, so it would be interesting to see what you think!


End file.
